When did you conduct your last ‘attitude check’?

I conduct regular ‘attitude checks’ on myself and keep an eye on the children’s as well. Why? Because if don’t, my attitude can imperceptibly change without my even realising it! It gets eroded by everyday c**p, you know the kind of stuff, the boiler has a hissy fit and you have to spend valuable time working out how to get it going again without a qualified engineer. That diet you’ve been following so diligently is showing zero results (why do I bother?) or the cat flap (third one in as many weeks) has been broken by the dog…..again!

All irritating, all ‘cuss worthy’ and all part of the ‘stuff’ that life incessantly throws at us. None of it worth having a full-blown breakdown over but annoying enough to chip away at our positive energy if we’re not careful enough to be aware of it. Hence the regular attitude checks!

My attitude before my ‘attitude check’!

OK, so what does one of my ‘attitude checks’ look like? Firstly, a quick summary of what hasn’t been going my way and how life changing those things were and are. Next, what is currently going well? And lastly, what are the most important things in life and are they on track? Put it all together, check current attitude to life and adjust accordingly! BINGO!

Well, no, not bingo, it’s not as simple as that of course. I mean, it should be, but when is anything as easy as that? My attitude can take a while to be adjusted, life grinds us down until we feel like a mere morsel of the person we want to be. We’re told to count our blessings, and of course we should, if we have a roof over our heads, food to feed our families and everyone enjoying good health, we have a lot to be grateful for. But in my experience, counting my blessings often leaves me just feeling guilty for not being a lot happier and more positive about life in general, and guilt is one of the most horrific, life sapping negatives we can live with.

And I’m good at guilt! I feel guilty that I haven’t done a good enough job bringing my children up, I feel guilty that I haven’t made good enough use of my abilities, I feel guilty that I’m wasting time, hell, I feel guilty about things that haven’t even happened yet but might! Women, in particular, seem to be experts in guilt, it’s as though it’s, kind of, in-built that we should question ourselves constantly, but what’s the cure?

Acceptance is key I think. Accepting that we can’t turn the clock back and do it again but we can change the here and now and help to steer the future appropriately helps a lot. Doing an attitude check is a great way of grounding ourselves and getting a handle on the things that really matter, family, health and leading a happy, fulfilled life. I use ‘sayings’ a lot in my life, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’, ‘One life, live it’, ‘Scars remind us where we’ve been, they don’t have to dictate where we’re going’…. and so on. But the one I always come back to that sums it all up beautifully is the Serenity Poem, it’s worth not just reading, but really understanding and applying in life, it’s saved my attitude more times than I care to remember!